By way of evidence of the hack, the group has released two PDF documents, appearing to have Restricted security status. Hosted at PDFcast.org, one document appears to date from 2007 and relates to ‘CIS Support for a New Joint HQ ISAF Joint CIS Control Centre’. The other link tweeted by Anonymous is currently returning a database error when followed, although a screenshot posted by Blottr indicates that it relates to ‘Outsourcing Balkans CIS Support’.

This supposed attack on a major international body follows a number of security breaches and Denial of Service attacks by Anonymous and closely-linked group LulzSec on targets such as the US Senate, the CIA and an FBI contractor. While Anonymous tends to follow a generally liberal, pro-freedom of expression agenda, and many of LulzSec’s targets were seemingly chosen to highlight poor security at the organisations concerned, it’s unclear why NATO has been specifically targeted in this case.

We have contacted NATO for their side of the story and will update as more information becomes available.

Martin Bryant was Editor-at-Large at The Next Web. He left the company in April 2016 for pastures new. You can find him on Twitter, on Snapchat as Martinsfp, subscribe to him on Facebook and visit his personal site. He's based in Manchester, UK and has a thing for quirky American music and Japanese video games.